Viral Hemorrhagic Fever ebola Essay Research Paper

Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (ebola) Essay, Research Paper

Viral Hemorrhagic Fever

How would you like it if you died? Well

that?s what?s happening to people in Africa.

Their families die around them, spreading the

deadly disease further into the ecosystem.

Killing at will, this potent filovirus sweeps

through villages with reckless abandon,

destroying anything and everything in it?s way,

and then just as mysteriously as it came, it

disappears without a trace. Even with our

modern technologies, we still don?t really know

too much about this death sentence disguised as

a virus. In the following, I will do my best to

teach you about Ebola, its cousins, where it?s

from, possible cures, effects, and so on. If we

want to, we can find a cure. We control our

destiny, and it?s up to us to find an anecdote

to this killing machine.

The Ebola virus is a highly contagious

filovirus that can be transmitted by re-use of

unsterilized syringes, needles, and directly

transferring it by contact of bodily fluids that

contain high levels, or ?bricks? of virus.

Aerosol transmission cannot be counted out, but

water vapor containing secretions of Ebola are

known to spread the infection. Seeing that

Ebola can be spread in numerous ways, including

being spread from animal to human, and

visa-versa, monkey handlers who work with Ebola

ridden monkeys have broken out with the infamous

hemorragic fever. The animal-to-human spread of

the virus has also killed off African tribes

that eat animals with high titers of the deadly

virus.

Ebola is an infectious disease of many faces.

It has strains, such as Mayinga, or Cardinal,

which are mainly named after people, or places

that they are discovered in. Strains are

slightly different versions of a certain virus.

Ebola?s three types that are known are: Ebola

Zaire, Ebola Sudan, and Ebola Reston. Ebola

Zaire was first discovered in 1976 in Zaire. It

is the deadliest disease of all of the Ebola

strains with a 9 out of 10 kill rate (see fig.

1-1). Ebola Sudan kills over 1/2 of the people

it comes in contact with. It was discovered in

1976 also. Ebola Reston was named after Reston,

Virginia, which had a shipment of cynomolgus

macaques, a type of monkey, infect a whole

monkey house with Ebola. Ebola Reston has

never killed anyone, but it killed 80% of the

monkeys that it devastated.

Ebola also has a very close cousin, Marburg.

Under an electron microscope, they are clearly

filoviradae. Filoviruses are characterized by

their notorious for their nucleotide with

strands, or ?tails?, which make it look like a

?cheerio with a tail?. Marburg, which

obliterates one in four of its victims, was

named after a city in Germany. Marburg, Germany

received a shipment of Marburg monkeys from

Uganda that infected 31 people, killing 7 of

them. In later years five more people broke out

with the dire Marburg virus, destroying all but

one of them. Marburg and Ebola both have to be

identified under an electron microscope.

Marburg was discovered before Ebola (see fig.

1-2), so when Ebola Zaire swept through Africa

in 1976, it was mistaken as milder version,

Marburg.

Ebola has been traced to Africa, where the

majority of cases occur, and the Philippines, in

which monkeys had been found with Ebola Reston.

Most of our knowledge of Ebola came in 1976,

when the biggest outbreak occurred. It stormed

through Zaire wiping out complete villages. In

all 550 cases were reported with 430 fatalities

When USAMRIID led an investigation to find

where Ebola was found in nature, they traced it

to Kitum Cave, in Zaire. As Colonel Gene

Johnson said, ?I?m completely sure we have

finally found the true hiding place of Ebola.?

After extensive testing of nearly 10,000 animals

and insects, they found no trace of Ebola.

Other expeditions followed, with the same

disappointments as the Kitum Cave search.

Ebola and other filoviruses kill people by

decomposing the body before it does away with

its victims. Usually their organs liquefy

before they ?crash? in a gruesome instance in

which blood and liquefied tissue spew from every

orifice in the body. The virus is composed of a

nucleus, and strands of RNA, for replication.

It makes its living by taking over cells and

bursting them creating an amplified amount of

virus. In some deaths, the virus disfigures the

corpse so badly that it is not recognizably

human. Once you get Ebola chances of survival

are minimal.